John L. McKnight
Professor of Education and Social Policy
Co-Director, Asset-Based Community Development Institute
Northwestern University
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John McKnight
Curriculum Vitae
Additional biographical
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For nearly three decades, John McKnight has conducted research
on social service delivery systems, health policy, community organizations,
neighborhood policy, and institutional racism. He currently directs
research projects focused on asset-based neighborhood development
and methods of community building by incorporating marginalized
people.
McKnight has been associated with many of the Institute's major
research projects since he joined the organization in 1969. These
have included research on the urban determinants of health, law
enforcement, urban disinvestment and metropolitan government, deinstitutionalized
child welfare services, police anticrime programs, and the effects
of the perception of crime upon community responses. He also directed
the Chicago Innovations Forum, an IPR-based dialogue among neighborhood
leaders and innovators in economic, political and social development.
Much of his recent work on asset-based community development is
captured in McKnight's co-authored book,
Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding
and Mobilizing a Community's Assets (1993), which has
circulated through a broad range of community, government, business,
nonprofit, and educational institutions in the United States and
Canada. Articles McKnight has written over the past two decades
were published in
The Careless Society (1995). McKnight serves on
the Board of Directors of numerous community organizations including
the Gamaliel Foundation and The National Training and Information
Center. Before joining Northwestern, McKnight directed the Midwest
office of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Current Projects
The Asset-Based
Community Development (ABCD) Institute. This institute grew
out of a project that evaluated the interrelationships of local
associations, enterprises, and nonprofit organizations in cities
around the country, and the effect of large public and private system
policies upon their functions. Theories based on nationwide data
gathered from over 100 neighborhoods in 20 cities on the community
development potential of local assets such as schools, churches
and parks, were refined and published in the book Building Communities
from the Inside Out.
The next phase of the project involved a study of the uses and
outcomes of the book's model capacity inventory in neighborhoods
across the United States. The workbook Guide
to Capacity Inventories: Mobilizing the Community Skills of Local
Residents (1997) documents the results of this investigation.
McKnight's research team has also produced 10 additional guides
to community building:
See other
Publications
See The Asset-Based
Community Development (ABCD) Institute.
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